


What Is And What Should Never Be

by boom_queen



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Jealousy, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-11
Updated: 2008-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-07 14:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boom_queen/pseuds/boom_queen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A past/present/future AU for Sam and Lee.  Equal parts humor, smut and angst.  "Sam needs this sometimes..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is And What Should Never Be

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Spoilers up through the end of S3  
> Prompt: stop, gasp, alley  
> 

Sam needs this sometimes. The quiet anonymity of watching the game in a bar he'll never go back to, surrounded by people he'll never see again.

It feels good to watch. He spends every gods-damned day _feeling_ the game. It's good to take a break and just watch. Pretend that he doesn't know all the players, doesn't have to catalog their strengths and strategies in case he meets them on the court. To lose himself in the art and movement of each muscled limb as the players run and duck, the skilled fingers that grab and throw.

Sam is no stickler for gender either, as his eyes trace along the players on screen. He's well aware of the strength and dexterity all pyramid players have. He's never seen any reason to judge or exclude beyond that.

Frakking teammates is complicated though. Frakking players on competing teams is even more complicated. And Sam would be lying to himself if he didn't admit that a large part of the lure of a small random sports bar like this one is the prospect of a good time without complications.

There must be a base or an academy nearby, with all these clean-cut, long-limbed, strong (and a little desperate looking) bodies around him. He breathes in the scent of ambrosia mixed with beer and whatever is available to smoke, the smell of sweat, eagerness and youthful anxieties. He laughs at the idea of himself in a uniform, taking orders from any one other than his coach. No, Sam's pretty sure he would have made a sorry excuse for a cadet.

Though he can see some of the benefits all around him. There are glances and smiles thrown his way on several sides. Some of them might be recognition, but most seem to be good old fashioned appreciation.

His eyes lock in on a group by the door. A loud blond cheering her group through a round of shots. There is joking and camaraderie and innuendo in their banter--it seems very familiar, so maybe it's not much of a stretch from the military to professional pyramid after all. But it's the quiet one at the edge of the group that catches his gaze. There is a smile on his pretty lips but his eyes observe keenly, perhaps a little tipsy but never letting loose that last bit of control. The other man rubs his hand across his face in a half-grimace at someone's bad joke, and Sam's cock jumps at the sight of the thick muscle stretching across his arms.

Sam feels his jaw go a little slack and he doesn't even try to stop the onslaught of images and possibilities his mind is readily supplying. What those tensed lips would like in a gasp. What those arms would look like straining _againstwithbecause_ of him. What that neck would smell like, bruised and worked raw beneath his teeth and lips.

He notices Sam's stare, and Sam's tempted to back down, caught in a long gaze, but he toughs it out. Raises his eyebrow in a question, because the question is obvious and there's no need to telegraph it any more than he already has. The pretty boy shrugs, gives a half-smile and nods to the rest of his group.

And the answer is all there in the body language. _I would but I'm stuck with these guys_ , or _Thanks, but not tonight_. Appreciative but not taking the bait.

Sam shrugs back and looks back at the large screen. The score has progressed several points on both sides while he was distracted. There are hours before the bar closes, and he knows he won't leave alone.

***

Lee stumbles down the dirt path between tents from the home-grown bar that has popped up on New Caprica to the landing area where the shuttles wait to take him back home to the Beast.

The command wears on him more than he'll show to his crew, and his mixed sympathy and rage at his father waxes and wanes daily, but he can escape it however briefly down here on the ground.

What he can't escape are the other memories. Ones of promises and proclamations and other broken intentions left behind on the valley's floor. The booze doesn't help either. It deadens one source of pain and fuels the other.

So Lee can't help the sharp, angry laugh that fires from his mouth when he sees Sam approaching him from one of the side paths beyond the next row of tents. He hasn't spoken to either of them since that morning, and he has been doing just fine with that so far.

But Sam doesn't look like he'll be put off easily, so Lee braces himself. He's still taken off guard when Sam doesn't even bother with a greeting, just grabs him by the sleeve and hauls him down a small alley between buildings, just beyond the residential tents. This part of the town is still being built, so the buildings are only partially constructed, empty at night. The quietness is unsettling and Lee starts to protest just to fill the silence, but Sam's hand covers his mouth angrily.

"Don't start with me Adama, don't even frakking start."

Lee can think of a dozen different reasons for Sam's wrath, so he bides his time and waits to see which sin he is being called out for now.

"If it isn't the high and mighty commander, down on our humble planet. Lee Adama, slumming with the little people. It's good to know that you haven't lost your human touch Lee, good to know you can still make time for the finer things left in this universe. A little booze, some friendly chatter with the ex-militaries, an all-night frak with my _wife_..."

And now Lee understands. There is no mistaking the menacing and the pain in Sam's voice this time. This is time for retribution, time for penance.

Sam chokes out, "You know she still smelled like you. Woke me up, dragged me down to the river, said our vows and the whole time all I could smell was you."

Lee's eyes flash in panic but his cock hardens too, and he knows Sam can feel it between them. It's always been like this for them, that edge of desperation and menacing and outright _jealousy_ coloring the ache and want.

Nothing but spit and pre-come to help them this time, Sam covers his fingers in both and works his way inside Lee. The gentleness of his fingers, stretching and burning and soothing, contrasted with the rage still in his eyes.

Lee knows he should feel used and dirty, fingered and frakked against a rough wall in a desolate city, but he feels so alive. He never wants it to stop.

***

The ache doesn't ever quite die down. Sam turns over in bed and pulls Lee closer towards him, tucking legs together and burying his face in Lee's neck. Lee nestles back into the embrace in his sleep. It never stops surprising Sam. Once the grief and the jealousy and the bitterness were behind them...well. Sam never really knew that love could be that full. That unconditional and complete. Sometimes Lee looks at him with so much vulnerability and want that Sam feels suffocated.

There have been times when Sam thought about leaving. Times when he panicked and doubted whether he could ever really stick it out with anyone else. Times when the need to get up, leave, _go_ was almost unbearable. Times when he was sure that someone would finally hear or see or know. Samuel T. Anders. Hero. Husband. Pilot. Toaster.

His hand reaches around front on Lee's chest to settle on the tags that still rest there after all this time. Three tags on one chain, a match to the three around his own neck. They never stopped wearing them. Long after Lee quit the military, and long before the settlement here on Earth. Fumbling around in a new world for purpose, for belonging, the weight of the tags kept them anchored in both past and present. Each wearing their own tags, and splitting hers between them. A constant clanking reminder of what and _who_ they lost to get here.

He stays for Lee. And for her: Kara's daughter. He stays, keeping their frakked up little family together with a singleness of mind and purpose only a machine could achieve. Not a force in this or any other world that could stop him.

He stays because this lie has become the truest thing he has ever known.


End file.
